A headline in The Globe titled 'CRTC orders Bell to prove Net 'shaping' needed' also says that the big ISPs have been asked to detail how that 'shaping' or restricting of large downloads effects all of their traffic, such as streaming of audio or video. The battle goes on, and you can get more details in the article.
If we go back to 'square one' on this, we could probably put some of the blame on
'Mighty Microsoft' for building this peer-to-peer capability into Windows, with core
Windows files like 'p2p.dll', 'p2psvc.dll', 'p2pnetsh.dll', etc.
This file-sharing with peer-to-peer technology first surfaced as a problem about a
year or so ago, when the BBC in the U.K. began offering its viewers older programs
for download to their home computers. The catch was that the users had to first
download a little 'facilitator' program which the BBC got from a company called
Kontiki, and it contained an executive file called 'kservice.exe' which in effect made
the user's computer a relay server on the network for anyone else who wanted to share
those BBC video files. When people began using that, their bandwidth usage went
right through the roof, and the ISPs serving those users had a hell of a time due to
the vastly increased demands on their systems.
More recently, the good old CBC has proposed a similar P2P file-sharing scheme
for those wanting to share certain older CBC programs - much as the BBC did.
The larger ISPs, like Bell and others, being aware by now of the mess created in
the U.K. by all that peer-to-peer file-sharing a year or so ago, have quite naturally
taken steps to limit the possible effects on their ability to provide acceptable service
